


i used to have a heart

by jeannedarc



Category: VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-26 15:12:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9908222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeannedarc/pseuds/jeannedarc
Summary: In the center of the floor, they huddle together, whispering ‘I love you’s in case this is the last time.





	

**Author's Note:**

> honestly, i just felt like writing something, and my usual modus operandi is bleak at best. unbeta'd, and my apologies in advance for any major mistakes (but i think i got my point across as best i can at 1am).

Darkness settled over them hours ago, but Sanghyuk is still wide awake, peering out the window, afraid. This is how they spend most nights the last couple weeks, staying awake, staying alert, staying _alive_.

“They haven’t made a lot of noise,” Jaehwan murmurs, though his voice is much closer to a scream just because of how tired Sanghyuk is. Jaehwan is curled up on the floor, at the baseboards; all their furniture (save for one chair on which Sanghyuk currently sits) is piled up in front of the door, securing them from the outside world.

“They haven’t made noise in a couple days,” Sanghyuk points out exhaustedly, reaching up to scrub at one eye with the back of his hand. “Do you think they’re gone?”

“I doubt it.” Jaehwan is nodding off even as he speaks, hands neatly tucked one over the other in his lap. He hasn’t even resorted to his usual habit of fiddling with his fingers, a detail which has escaped neither Sanghyuk’s notice or concern. “They’re just being quiet. Waiting for us to make a mistake.”

Their vigilance is rewarded in silence, but that only serves to unnerve them more.

The bags under their eyes have multiplied in the last couple days alone, nevermind the shifts of sleep they’ve been forced to take in their own defense. Sanghyuk isn’t normally the type to be afraid of anything, but for some reason, even he has fallen prey to the fearful inspiration that lurks just outside the windows, waiting, watching, wanting.

A soft scritch at their front door has them scrambling away from the window, Jaehwan moving quickly despite the fact that he hadn’t been the one looking. He’s long since lost the energy to chastise Sanghyuk for potentially putting them in danger.

The rust-red stains, permanent reminders of their previous mistakes in dealing with this disease, trail along the cracks in the walls that have been made since the epidemic came, swept the nation. Every time either of them look at the marks, they shudder, overcome with the need to scrub blood from their walls, their floors, beneath their nails.

In the center of the floor of their otherwise empty home, they huddle together, whispering ‘I love you’s in case this is the last time, in case their worst fears are realised on this night. Jaehwan fits perfectly into Sanghyuk’s arms, feels feverish in the forehead under his lips. Hot. Too hot.

They have the kind of slow sex to which they’ve become accustomed since the epidemic -- the sort where neither really wants it, but thinks the other does, and wants to please, again just in case this is the last time. It’s funny how they’ve been more affectionate the last few weeks than they had been in the months before. When it’s over and both are as close to sated as one can be in a state of constant panic, Sanghyuk urges Jaehwan to go to sleep. He just looks so fucking frail, as if about to shatter into a million pieces right then and there, soon as he catches his breath.

“An hour,” Jaehwan agrees, stoutly as he can given how completely spent he is, mouth forming that infamous pout that had gotten him out of so much trouble in the Before.

“An hour,” Sanghyuk hums with a nod, fingers wringing anxiously at the hem of his wrinkled t-shirt, knowing full well that he’s going to let Jaehwan sleep as long as he possibly can, and while it probably won’t take more than an hour alone before the paranoia sets in again, the intention is really what counts in this situation, he thinks.

They’ve made a makeshift bed in the middle of the floor, a pile of blankets and pillows, like children playing pretend at a grand something-or-other, but messier. Jaehwan looks even smaller, even more frail, curled up in the middle of a sea of comforters, finding no comfort but closing his eyes and shaking until he snores. The irony isn’t lost on Sanghyuk.

Forty-five minutes pass with Sanghyuk sitting on the floor a good ten feet from Jaehwan’s snoozing form; he wants to get closer, but there’s no air conditioning in the After, just the gentle scratching of the monsters, trying to get into the house next door.

He’d rather die, he thinks, than let these things get him.

In the Before, he and Jaehwan had been… not happy, because that denotes an active joy in life, in seeking out one another’s company, in coming home at the end of the day and finding the same smile you’ve been with for three years. They’d been, at best, content, well-adjusted to each other’s company, no longer in love the way newlyweds often were but in a soft, unspoken way. They ordered takeout, watched horrible movies (or worse, horrible anime), lay next to each other on the couch, legs outstretched, hands linked, and they were peaceful. 

Then the epidemic had come, and they had lost everything.

The power was the first thing to go, and the comfort of temperature control with it. The city officials had shut off the power grids in the hopes that people, not having electricity, would be discouraged from spreading the disease amongst themselves or, worse yet, to other nations. A foolish plan -- people had already become sick, and left the country. Everyone around them evacuated, only to be lost in the sloshes of people trying to escape. Millions died just attempting to leave, either due to poor travelling conditions or because they simply couldn’t withstand the pollen that slowly but surely filled their lungs to the brim. 

They promised one another that they wouldn’t lose each other, not like that. So they found supplies, Jaehwan’s face shrouded in several layers of masks, the way they had seen the disaster relief volunteers do when it first started, when people still wanted to help.

Eventually, the calls for evacuation ended. The sirens stopped roaring early in the morning, announcing disaster about which they already knew. People stopped knocking, and the acrid stench of burning bodies, amazing and alarming all at once, stopped wafting into their house.

That was when the scratching started.

The bodies that hadn’t been burned were stuffed with the spores that had made everyone sick, tainted the water supply. Eventually those bodies simply burst, spraying spores everywhere in their blast radius, and body parts would hit the walls, the windows, the doors of their home.

The way they figured, they were fucked. They’d been living off bottled water -- their own supply, rationed in steadily growing increments as they came to the conclusion that they needed it dearly -- since it had started. They hadn’t slept in case something needed to be taken care of. Most of all, they were afraid to lose one another and to sleep right through it, and avoided that fate as strongly as they could.

_Scrrrraaaaatch._

Sanghyuk shivers, now, in the present, scoots a couple feet closer to where Jaehwan lays, if only to attempt to find some form of comfort just in being nearer to him, no intention of waking him if he can help it. It’s been hot since the spores started taking over, but he’s freezing cold. Maybe he has the spores inside him and hadn’t realised. Anything is possible in this day and age, after all, and there are no doctors left to confirm his suspicion.

He doesn’t want to die, not like this, but when he coughs it’s neon yellow spittle that flecks his palm, then his inner elbow.

Jaehwan, reacting to the noise, jolts upright, crawls across the floor and takes Sanghyuk into his arms.

“We promised we’d stay together,” Sanghyuk croaks, miserable beyond reason, and Jaehwan shushes him with a line of kisses dusted along his brow.

“We’re staying together.”

Sanghyuk falls asleep in Jaehwan’s arms, looking so fragile Jaehwan is sure he’ll shatter -- an irony; he will, eventually, should Jaehwan not be strong enough to take care of him the way he needs to be after his death.

Jaehwan lifts his tired, blurry eyes to the rust-red stains, trailing along the cracks in the walls. He already knows what happens when you don’t dispose of a body properly, taking, of course, the state of things into account.

The sun rises. The scratching ceases. Sanghyuk stops breathing, gasps his last in Jaehwan’s arms, and Jaehwan is too tired, too dehydrated, too finished with this world to weep, though somewhere deep down he is stricken with something ineffable. Jaehwan straps on his masks, though not before one last kiss to the blunt tip of Sanghyuk’s nose.

When his boyfriend is properly disposed of in a yard on the next street over, Jaehwan re-enters the house. He watches as the sun rises in a monochrome sky, lights the slits between the blinds. Darkness ended minutes ago, but Jaehwan is still wide awake, peering out the window, afraid, alone.

**Author's Note:**

> so many things are purposefully left ambiguous in this fic. i would be happy to hear your interpretation of anything not explicitly stated. thank you for reading ♥


End file.
